Oriana Fallaci told a Manhattan audience on Monday that she hates Islam and fears that Muslim immigration poses a greater danger to the West than Islamic terrorism.

The Italian journalist and author, who came out of retirement after September 11, 2001, to sound the tocsin on what she viewed was a clash of civilizations, said in a lengthy speech that she doesn’t believe in the existence of moderate Islam. “There is no such thing as good Islam,” she said.

She compared the Koran, the Islamic holy book, to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and said she opposed the notion of dialogue between followers of Islam and other religions.

New York Sun, 30 November 2005

Even Daniel Pipes thought Fallaci’s speech was a teensy bit over the top. Not so Robert Spencer, who wholeheartedly endorsed this racist diatribe: “Fallaci’s a voice of rare courage…. When she is gone, we may hope – for all our sakes – that many others will be ready to step into the breach and speak the truth as she did, whatever the cost, as she did. As Oriana Fallaci so memorably demonstrated in her address on receiving the Annie Taylor Award, nothing less than our civilization itself is at stake.”

Front Page Magazine, 30 November 2005

It’s worth recalling that not so long ago Nick Cohen published a defence of this revolting bigot in the Observer. See here.